Re: How voting works...
Op 19-10-2011 14:00, Rob Weir schreef: On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 6:50 PM, Ross Gardler rgard...@opendirective.com wrote: I'm not going to dig into all the details of how a vote is called in the ASF. In posting this I am not asking for the current vote to be recalled, there is no need. I am just wanting to flag something that concerns me about how the vote was called (and as per usual this is just advice from a mentor, these are not rules that must be adopted). In an ASF community everyone is entitled to an opinion. Everyone should be encouraged to express that opinion in a formal vote, just as much as they should be encouraged to express their opinions in day to day discussion. We're very concerned, as we should be, to ensure that everyone, even non-PPMC members, can weigh in on all project discussions and decisions, including policy and governance questions. As we should. I applaud that commitment to openness. However, the proposal that we're voting on has this clause regarding the support forums: Forum governance will be discussed in a publicly readable forum. Write access will be limited to those with at least 10 posts. In other words, we're agreeing to a proposal where it is not true that In an ASF community everyone is entitled to an opinion. Everyone should be encouraged to express that opinion in a formal vote, just as much as they should be encouraged to express their opinions in day to day discussion. *You're forgetting that the forums aren't an almost closed mailing list like ooo-dev. How many people are subscribed to ooo-dev? As of 9/20 the number of registered users of the forums is 44830 and the number of people with over 10 posts still exceeds 1000. If we'd open the gates to anyone, you'd probably soon see bored kids pollute the discussions with the kind of crap that they now post on Wikipedia. If you don't like the forum, I suggest that you just ignore it. **Peter aka floris v* ** When I brought that up in the discussion thread I was shut down by a mentor for introducing an overly legalistic parsing of the proposal. I take that to mean I was thinking too much. I'll stop now, because honestly the incongruity if our words and actions is shameful and painful to observe. -Rob It is true that only some members of the community have binding votes. However, this only becomes important in the event of an absence of community consensus. Therefore, when calling a vote please do not word it in such a way that implies others in the community do not have a vote that counts. It does count. A responsible PPMC member will use their own vote to support any appropriate objections from the community. They can only do that if the community is encouraged to express their views alongside everyone else.. Specifically, there is no need to define binding votes in the vote thread, the way Apache Projects vote is well documented and, over time, the AOOo project will gain its own guidelines. Secondly, do not list the people who are important enough to have a binding vote. Thirdly, explicitly call for all community members to express their preferences in the vote. In other words, make every action of the PPMC as inclusive as possible. Finally, Denis - thank you for calling the vote. Ross -- Ross Gardler (@rgardler) Programme Leader (Open Development) OpenDirective http://opendirective.com
Re: How voting works...
On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 12:41 PM, floris v floris...@gmail.com wrote: Op 19-10-2011 14:00, Rob Weir schreef: On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 6:50 PM, Ross Gardler rgard...@opendirective.com wrote: I'm not going to dig into all the details of how a vote is called in the ASF. In posting this I am not asking for the current vote to be recalled, there is no need. I am just wanting to flag something that concerns me about how the vote was called (and as per usual this is just advice from a mentor, these are not rules that must be adopted). In an ASF community everyone is entitled to an opinion. Everyone should be encouraged to express that opinion in a formal vote, just as much as they should be encouraged to express their opinions in day to day discussion. We're very concerned, as we should be, to ensure that everyone, even non-PPMC members, can weigh in on all project discussions and decisions, including policy and governance questions. As we should. I applaud that commitment to openness. However, the proposal that we're voting on has this clause regarding the support forums: Forum governance will be discussed in a publicly readable forum. Write access will be limited to those with at least 10 posts. In other words, we're agreeing to a proposal where it is not true that In an ASF community everyone is entitled to an opinion. Everyone should be encouraged to express that opinion in a formal vote, just as much as they should be encouraged to express their opinions in day to day discussion. *You're forgetting that the forums aren't an almost closed mailing list like ooo-dev. How many people are subscribed to ooo-dev? As of 9/20 the number of registered users of the forums is 44830 and the number of people with over 10 posts still exceeds 1000. If we'd open the gates to anyone, you'd probably soon see bored kids pollute the discussions with the kind of crap that they now post on Wikipedia. If you don't like the forum, I suggest that you just ignore it. I do care about the forums. That is why in my feedback I said that I was concerned that your over-cautious approach cuts you off from potential sources of useful community feedback. You already have the ability to remove posts and users who violate the board standards. But these should be conduct standards, but post count standards. You might have the most brilliant observation come from a new user on their first day on the list. I don't think you should assume that just because someone has made 10 posts on spreadsheet import filters, that their observations on forum governance are worth hearing, but someone who has only posted 8 is not worth hearing. This is very un-Apache. My opinion, of course. And keep in mind that Apache has large mailing lists as well. users @ tomcat.apache.org has over 3200, for example. -Rob **Peter aka floris v* ** When I brought that up in the discussion thread I was shut down by a mentor for introducing an overly legalistic parsing of the proposal. I take that to mean I was thinking too much. I'll stop now, because honestly the incongruity if our words and actions is shameful and painful to observe. -Rob It is true that only some members of the community have binding votes. However, this only becomes important in the event of an absence of community consensus. Therefore, when calling a vote please do not word it in such a way that implies others in the community do not have a vote that counts. It does count. A responsible PPMC member will use their own vote to support any appropriate objections from the community. They can only do that if the community is encouraged to express their views alongside everyone else.. Specifically, there is no need to define binding votes in the vote thread, the way Apache Projects vote is well documented and, over time, the AOOo project will gain its own guidelines. Secondly, do not list the people who are important enough to have a binding vote. Thirdly, explicitly call for all community members to express their preferences in the vote. In other words, make every action of the PPMC as inclusive as possible. Finally, Denis - thank you for calling the vote. Ross -- Ross Gardler (@rgardler) Programme Leader (Open Development) OpenDirective http://opendirective.com
Re: How voting works...
On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 11:50 PM, Ross Gardler rgard...@opendirective.com wrote: snip In other words, make every action of the PPMC as inclusive as possible. +1 Projects developed the Apache way only stay healthy when there is a continual flow from user to contributor to committer to PMCer. IMHO a positive, inclusive and open culture is therefore essential. Establishing such a culture is critical to long term success. Robert
Re: How voting works...
On 19 October 2011 10:01, Robert Burrell Donkin robertburrelldon...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 11:50 PM, Ross Gardler rgard...@opendirective.com wrote: snip In other words, make every action of the PPMC as inclusive as possible. +1 Thank you Dennis for bothering to explain this to the community, it is clear that you already get this. Ross
Re: How voting works...
On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 6:50 PM, Ross Gardler rgard...@opendirective.com wrote: I'm not going to dig into all the details of how a vote is called in the ASF. In posting this I am not asking for the current vote to be recalled, there is no need. I am just wanting to flag something that concerns me about how the vote was called (and as per usual this is just advice from a mentor, these are not rules that must be adopted). In an ASF community everyone is entitled to an opinion. Everyone should be encouraged to express that opinion in a formal vote, just as much as they should be encouraged to express their opinions in day to day discussion. We're very concerned, as we should be, to ensure that everyone, even non-PPMC members, can weigh in on all project discussions and decisions, including policy and governance questions. As we should. I applaud that commitment to openness. However, the proposal that we're voting on has this clause regarding the support forums: Forum governance will be discussed in a publicly readable forum. Write access will be limited to those with at least 10 posts. In other words, we're agreeing to a proposal where it is not true that In an ASF community everyone is entitled to an opinion. Everyone should be encouraged to express that opinion in a formal vote, just as much as they should be encouraged to express their opinions in day to day discussion. When I brought that up in the discussion thread I was shut down by a mentor for introducing an overly legalistic parsing of the proposal. I take that to mean I was thinking too much. I'll stop now, because honestly the incongruity if our words and actions is shameful and painful to observe. -Rob It is true that only some members of the community have binding votes. However, this only becomes important in the event of an absence of community consensus. Therefore, when calling a vote please do not word it in such a way that implies others in the community do not have a vote that counts. It does count. A responsible PPMC member will use their own vote to support any appropriate objections from the community. They can only do that if the community is encouraged to express their views alongside everyone else.. Specifically, there is no need to define binding votes in the vote thread, the way Apache Projects vote is well documented and, over time, the AOOo project will gain its own guidelines. Secondly, do not list the people who are important enough to have a binding vote. Thirdly, explicitly call for all community members to express their preferences in the vote. In other words, make every action of the PPMC as inclusive as possible. Finally, Denis - thank you for calling the vote. Ross -- Ross Gardler (@rgardler) Programme Leader (Open Development) OpenDirective http://opendirective.com
Re: How voting works...
On 19 October 2011 13:00, Rob Weir robw...@apache.org wrote: On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 6:50 PM, Ross Gardler ... However, the proposal that we're voting on has this clause regarding the support forums: Forum governance will be discussed in a publicly readable forum. Write access will be limited to those with at least 10 posts. In other words, we're agreeing to a proposal where it is not true that In an ASF community everyone is entitled to an opinion. Everyone should be encouraged to express that opinion in a formal vote, just as much as they should be encouraged to express their opinions in day to day discussion. When I brought that up in the discussion thread I was shut down by a mentor for introducing an overly legalistic parsing of the proposal. I take that to mean I was thinking too much. Thanks for flagging this Rob. I didn't see that exchange. My own opinion (with mentor hat on) is that since the ooo-dev list is the place where decisions are made about the project this is OK. People who are not happy with the forums can escalate to the ooo-dev list. In this I assume that it is the PPMC who have ultimate control over the forums, i.e. they have the authority to deal with the unlikely situation that a user escalates an issue (I'm afraid I have not actually read the proposal). I'll stop now, because honestly the incongruity if our words and actions is shameful and painful to observe. The Apache Way is not a set of rule and processes. It is a set of guiding principles with just enough rules and process. We trust to the fact that most people want the best for the project and have mechanisms for dealing with those who are obstructive. As long as my assumption above is correct I see trust in the volunteers of the forum and I see a blunt instrument for fixing things in the unlikely event they break. Ross
How voting works...
I'm not going to dig into all the details of how a vote is called in the ASF. In posting this I am not asking for the current vote to be recalled, there is no need. I am just wanting to flag something that concerns me about how the vote was called (and as per usual this is just advice from a mentor, these are not rules that must be adopted). In an ASF community everyone is entitled to an opinion. Everyone should be encouraged to express that opinion in a formal vote, just as much as they should be encouraged to express their opinions in day to day discussion. It is true that only some members of the community have binding votes. However, this only becomes important in the event of an absence of community consensus. Therefore, when calling a vote please do not word it in such a way that implies others in the community do not have a vote that counts. It does count. A responsible PPMC member will use their own vote to support any appropriate objections from the community. They can only do that if the community is encouraged to express their views alongside everyone else.. Specifically, there is no need to define binding votes in the vote thread, the way Apache Projects vote is well documented and, over time, the AOOo project will gain its own guidelines. Secondly, do not list the people who are important enough to have a binding vote. Thirdly, explicitly call for all community members to express their preferences in the vote. In other words, make every action of the PPMC as inclusive as possible. Finally, Denis - thank you for calling the vote. Ross -- Ross Gardler (@rgardler) Programme Leader (Open Development) OpenDirective http://opendirective.com
